Wendy Lecker: Waivers intensify injustice of No Child Left Behind

Published 5:56 pm, Friday, November 2, 2012

If education is supposed to be the civil rights issue of this era, why does Connecticut's new system for rating schools and districts discriminate against our most vulnerable students? Connecticut instituted the new system in order to obtain a waiver from some of the provisions of the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). NCLB mandated that states judge schools and districts, and impose punishments, based on test scores of the entire school and district and of subgroups of students: different ethnic groups, English language learners, children living in poverty and students with disabilities. One claimed benefit of reporting scores by subgroups is that this revealed which groups of children tended to score poorly on standardized tests.

However, under NCLB, schools serving a more heterogeneous population were more likely to be punished. Not only did entire schools and districts have to pass the testing goal for a year, called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), but each subgroup had to pass the goal as well. Thus, a school or district with fewer subgroups had a better chance of making AYP than a diverse one.

Since the ultimate goal of NCLB, that 100 percent of students would be proficient on state tests by 2014, was widely acknowledged as unattainable, more and more schools were failing to make AYP as we approached that deadline. Even homogeneous, affluent districts were bound to fail. Sanctions under NCLB ranged from mandating unregulated tutoring and allowing students to transfer out, to more serious interventions such as firing all staff and/or handing schools over to private operators. None of these sanctions have proven effective at improving schools.

Claiming to redress the impending problem of nationwide failure, the Obama administration offered "waivers" of some of the NCLB mandates. The waivers required new rating systems with tiered intervention in schools and districts. States, like Connecticut, rushed to meet the waiver requirements. The 2012 education reform law codified our new accountability system. Districts are now judged according to a "district performance index." The state now accords a weight to each of the five performance levels on our state standardized tests. The highest performance levels receive a weight of one, and the lowest is weighted zero.

If a district has enough high-scoring students, their scores will outweigh lower-performing subgroups. Therefore, those homogeneous, affluent districts that would have been penalized under NCLB will now get a pass. Diverse districts with the neediest subgroups, which also happen to be Connecticut's poorest districts, are now singled out for sanctions. The new rating system has a disproportionately punitive impact on our neediest districts, serving mostly African-American, Latino, English-language-learning students and students living in poverty.

The rating system for schools follows the same discriminatory pattern. Schools with a high "school performance index" have the least state intervention, and schools with a diverse population will be penalized. There is no scientific or research-based justification for establishing this weighting system. The benefit of the weighting system accrues to one type of school and district: affluent and homogeneous. The waivers intensify the injustice of NCLB, insulating the wealthy districts from punishment while ensuring it for our most underfunded districts serving our neediest population. The punishments follow the same failed NCLB script: public shaming, forcing schools to implement unproven measures to boost test scores and, for some, firings, takeover and privatization.

In addition to the new skewed rating system, the state is also mandating that districts establish different testing targets for different subgroups. Therefore, for example, African-American students will have a different target than white students, as will other underserved populations. It is puzzling how setting lower expectations for children of color advances the goal of an equal education for all.

Connecticut is not the only state using a discriminatory rating system. Questions about differential treatment have been raised in North Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin. In New Jersey, a coalition of child advocates asked U.S. Secretary Duncan to suspend the unfair waiver provisions.

Perhaps it is time for policy makers to admit that test-based "accountability," i.e., sanctions based on test scores, is unworkable. It has moved us from a system in which underserved children were ignored to one where they are punished. The waiver's "solution," letting wealthy districts escape scrutiny while imposing all the negative effects on the poorest districts, contravenes any notions of fair play and equity. If policy makers wanted to truly put children first, they would redirect their focus away from faulty tests and ineffective yet harmful punishment and toward improving the conditions in every school where our children learn.